WHAT!? Docs Delves Into “Bronies: The Adult Fans Of My Little Pony”

If you’ve spent any significant time with little girls, then My Little Pony is familiar to you: Colorful equines with “cutie marks” and flashy names like Rainbow Dash, Cheerilee and Starsong.

But the fab fillies are also favorites with a subset of guys. Grown guys. Guys with facial hair and driver’s licenses. These (mostly straight) male My Little Pony fans, known as bronies, and are the subject of the film Bronies: Adult Fans of My Little Pony, debuting October 14 as part of WHAT!? Docs on Logo.

Directed by Laurent Malaquais, Bronies explores the not-so-small adult fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all theshow’s adjacent merch. Actor John de Lancie, who provided voicework on MLP teamed up with show creator Lauren Faust, producer Michael Brockhoff and voice actor Tara Strong onboard to get the film funded with a Kickstarter campaign (the site’s second most successful documentary project) and the crew interview bronies in Germany, England and at the annual BronyCon gathering in New York.

This documentary discovers that the essential story elements of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic – Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty and Magic – have a universality that extends beyond age and gender, and that Bronies are pushing the boundaries of what society deems appropriate in their quest for a kinder, gentler future.

Guys subverting gender norms? Ponies with luxurious candy-color hair and drag-queen-esque names? Yeah, we could get into that.